The Devil Tavern is a Downworld establishment in London found on the intersection of Fleet Street and Chancery Lane that caters both Downworlders and the occasional Nephilim. It is hidden by glamour and appears like a bank to mundanes on the outside.
Description
The pub is a half-timbered structure with great diamond-paned windows, the inside is illuminated with a red light and filled with "high, sweet, thin music, haunting and seductive." The sign of the tavern hangs over the door, depicting a man reaching to tweak the nose of a horned demon above the name of the bar lettered in lower cases—"the devil tavern."
History
The Devil Tavern was once a mundane haunt, until it also became a popular place among Downworlders. Concerned about the intertwining of the Shadow World with the mundane world, the Shadowhunters barred mundanes from the place by using glamour, making it appear like the tavern was knocked down and replaced by a bank.
Will Herondale used to pretend to frequent the tavern to become inebriated. He even claimed that he was once banned from the place by the proprietor in 1878, after he started a fight with "Six-Fingered Nigel" who supposedly accosted and tried to rob him.[1] He also told his friends that the old customers of the bar were probably as degenerate as Aloysius Starkweather.[2] Jem Carstairs showed Tessa Gray the tavern one evening when she asked him about glamours and the London Institute.[1]
Around 1901, four young Shadowhunter trainees of the London Institute, including Will's son James Herondale, rented a room at the Tavern and paid a monthly fee to keep it exclusively theirs, which its proprietor allowed due to a debt owed to the Herondales.[3]
Trivia
- The Devil Tavern was in fact a real place in London demolished in 1787, with a plaque commemorating it currently placed over the spot where it used to be. The one featured in the series is actually a fictional, shadow version of the real one.